As microelectronic circuits become increasingly integrated, the demand for smaller components becomes stronger. For capacitive components, the materials presently employed have inadequate dielectric constants to be used with lower area. To remedy this problem, exotic high dielectric constant materials such as Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) are presently in the research stage in many laboratories, especially for their potential use in DRAM applications. Such materials, however, invariably require the use of chemical elements foreign to the usual microelectronics manufacturing procedures and therefore require alteration of manufacturing processes and extensive compatibility testing.
Another approach has been to alter the composition of presently used dielectrics to try to obtain higher dielectric constants. For example, a new dielectric material comprising Ta.sub.2 O.sub.5 doped with TiO.sub.2 is disclosed in the application of Robert J. Cava entitled "Dielectric Material Comprising Ta.sub.2 O.sub.5 Doped With TiO.sub.2 and Devices Employing Same", Ser. No. 08/767,153, filed Dec. 16, 1996, a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/491,436, filed Jun. 16, 1995. Cava reports that the bulk material doped at the ratio of 0.92Ta.sub.2 O.sub.5 : 0.08TiO.sub.2 has a dielectric constant enhanced by a factor of 3 over undoped Ta.sub.2 O.sub.5. Because both Ta and Ti are compatible with current microelectronics processing, the new dielectric can be used to make capacitors of reduced size with but minor modifications of conventional processing.